CityLab Daily: The Minimum Wage Can’t Pay for a Two-Bedroom Apartment

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Placed wager: If you were working a minimum-wage job in the United States and needed to rent a two-bedroom apartment, where would you go? As it turns out, that place is nowhere to be found: There’s not a single state, metro area, or county where 40 hours of work at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour pulls in enough money to cover rent without exceeding 30 percent of income. In only 28 counties is it possible to rent a one-bedroom affordably. As the map below shows, paying the fair market rent for a two-bedroom could require working up to three full-time jobs in some places.

Those are the latest statistics from the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s annual “Out of Reach” report, which finds that the housing affordability crisis plunged to new depths in 2019. While many states and cities have higher minimum wages, none are enough to meet the housing wage without taking on a second job. This challenge isn’t restricted to the nation’s poorest: The money needed to rent a two-bedroom exceeds the average renter’s wages everywhere. CityLab’s Sarah Holder has the story: Minimum Wage Still Can’t Pay for a Two-Bedroom Apartment Anywhere